The Pulaski citizen. [volume] (Pulaski, Tenn.) 1866-current, 1887-04-21
SECRET SOCIETIES
THE SUBJECT OF DR.. TALMAGE'S
SERMON AT THE TABERNACLE.

SERMON AT THE TABERNACLE.
"what Is the Moral Effect of Free Ma
sonry, Odd Fellowship, knights of
Labor, Greek Alphabet and Other So
cietics?"
BROOKLYN, April 1.-THE Rev. T. De
Witt Talmage, d. D., announced to his con-
gregation to-day that, as the Brooklyn taber-
nacle has been uncomfortably crowded for
many years, the trustees have purchased the
adjoining ground, on which a great church,
prayer and Sunday school room will be
built, which on Sabbath can be opened into
the main auditorium, thus giving room for
at least 1000 more hearers at services. Six
thousand people are crowded into the pres
ent building, 4,6j0 of these in pews and
about 1900 seated in aisles and standing
The improvement viii add greatly 10 this
capacity.
The subject of DR.. Talmage's sermon to-day
was, "What is the moral effect of Free
Masonry, Odd Fellowship, Knights of Labor,
Greek Alphabet and other societiesF' The
text was from Proverbs XIV, Q: "Dis-
cover not o secret to another" Dr. Talmage
said:
1t appears that in Solomon's time as in all
subsequent periods of the world, there were
people too much disposed to tell all they knew.
1t was blab, blab, blab: physicians revealing
the case of their patients, lawyers exposing
the private affairs of their clients, neighbors
advertising the faults of the next door resi-
dent; pretended friends betraying conf
dences. One-half of the trouble of every
community comes from the fact that so many
people have not capacity to keep their
mouths shut. When | hear something dis
paraging of you my first duty is not to tell
you. But if tell you what somebody has
said against you, and then go out and tell
everybody else what told you, and they go
out and tell others what told them that
told you, and we eli go out, some to hunt up
the originator of the story and others to hunt
IL down, we shall get the whole community
talking about what you did do and what you
did not do, and there will be as many scalps
taken as though q band of Modocs had swept
upon helpless village. We have two ears
but only ono tongue, physiological sugges-
ton that we ought to hear a good deal more
than we tell. Let us join a conspiracy that
we will tell each other all the good and
nothing of the ill, and then there will not be
such awful need of sermons on Solomon's
Solomon had a very large domestic circle
In his earlier days he had very confused no
tions about monogamy and polygamy, and
his mutitudinoUs associates in the nlatri-
monial state kept him too well informed as to
what was going on in Jerusalem. They
gathered up all the privacies of the city and
poured them into his ear, and his family be-
came q Scrosis or female debating society
of 700, discussing day after day all the diff
Culties between husbands and wives, between
employers and employees between rulers and
subjects, until Solomon, ip my text, deplores
volubility about affairs that do not belong
20 us and extols the virtue Of secretiveness.
BY the power of q secret divulged, families,
churches, neighborhoods, nations fly apart.
BY the power of q secret kept, great charities,
Socialities, Peformatory movements and
Christian enterprises may be advanced. Men
are gregarious-cattle IN herds fish in schools,
birds in fiocks, mon in social circles You
by the discharge of a gun scatter flock
of quails or by the plunge of the anchor send
apart tine denizens of the sea, but they will
gather themselves together again. If you by
some new power could break the associations
in which men now stand, they would again
adhere. God meant it so. He has gathered
all the flowers and shrubs into associations.
You may plant one forget-me- not or hearts
ease alone, away off upon the hillside, but it
will soon hunt up some other forget me-not or
hearts-ease Plants love company. You will
find them talking to each other IN the dew A
GALAXY of stars is only mutual life insurance
company. You sometimes see man with no
out branchipgs of sympathy. His nature is
cold and hard, like ships mast ice glazed,
which the most agile sailor could never climb.
Others have thousand roots and a thousand
branches. Innumerable tendrils climb their
hearts and blossom all the way up, and the
fowls of heaven sing in the branches. In con-
sequence of this tendency we find men coming
together in tribes, in communities in churches,
in societies. Some gather together to cultivate
the arts, some to plan for the welfare of the
state, some to discuss religious themes, some
to kindle their nirth, some 20 advance their
craft So every active community is divided
in associations of artists, Of merchants, of
bookbinders, of carpenters, of masons. of
plasterers, of shipwrights, of plumbers, Do
you cry out against it9 Then you cry out
against a tendency divinely implanted. Your
TRADES would accomplish no more than if you
should preach to busy ant hill or beehive a
long sermon against secret societies.
Here we find the oft-discussed question,
whether associations that do their work with
closed doors, admit their members by pass
words and greet each other with secret grip
are right or wrong. | answer that it de-
rends entirely on the nature of the object for
which they meet. Is it to pass the hours in
revelry, wassail, blasphemy and obscene talk,
or to plot trouble to the state, or to debauch
the innocent, then l say, with an emphasis
that no man can mistake, MOI But is the OBJ
ieot the defense of the rights of any class
against oppression, the improvement of the
mind, the enlargement Of the heart, the ad-
vancement of art, the defense of the govern
ment, the extirpation of crime, or the kind
ling of pure-hearted sociality, then l say,
with just as much emphasis, Yes.
There is no need that we who plan for the
conquest of right over wrong should publish
to al the world our intentions The general
of an army never sends to the opposing troops
information of the coming attack. Shall we
who have enlisted in the cause of God and
humanity, expose our plans to the enemy
No! we viii in secret plot the ruin of all the
enterprises of Satan and his cohorts. When
they expect US by day we will call upon them
by night While they are strengthening theiI
left wing we will double up their right. BY Q
plan of battle formed in secret conclave WE
will come suddenly upon them, crying: 1.-The
swordof the Lord and Of Gideon" Secresy OF
plot aud execution are wrong only when the
object and ends are nefarious Every family
is secret society, every business firm and eV
erv banking and insurance institution. Those
men who have no capacity to keep secret
are unfit for positions of trust anywhere
There are thousands of men whose vital peeo
is culturing capacity to keep secret Meh
talk too much and women, too. There is
time to keep silence, as well as. a time t
speak.
Although not belonging to any Of the great
secret societies about which there has been sS
much violent discussion, have only words o.
praise for those associations which have FOL
their object the maintenance of right agains
wrong, or the reclamation Of inebriates, or
like the score of mutual benefit societies callet
by different names, that provide temporary
4.